Safekeeping
by skauble
Summary: A set of hidden letters changes everything Oliver and Chloe thought they knew about family - their own and each other's.


**Warning! Read this:** Because I usually write Chlollie, I want to give a heads up here that this story is about Chloe and Oliver, not Chloe/Oliver. I don't usually spoil my first chapter this much, but this is a story about Oliver discovering that he has a sister he never knew...see where this is going?

**Spoilers:** Pandora (maybe some of Disciple).  
**Two important A/Ns:**  
**1) **This awesome idea was not mine. I saw the plot bunny over on the wonderful tedith's livejournal and couldn't get the storyline out of my head. She was gracious enough to give me permission to play with the plot, but I want to be clear that her post contained a number of fascinating points, so if something really great happens in the story, you can most likely thanks her for it. :)  
**2) **This takes place between Pandora and Disciple. I don't usually do this, but because SV sucks at continuity I'm going to clarify that, for the purposes of this story, Oliver's parents died when he was 9, and Chloe was born in 1887.

* * *

**Chapter One**

_To my darling daughter,  
_

The letter dropped gently to the desk below as it slipped from Oliver's nerveless grasp. The words were written clearly in his father's hand, but were nothing he could have expected. In fact, they were so completely at odds with the reality he knew that he wasn't quite sure how to make the two merge.

He stared down at the paper, almost afraid to pick it up. While a dozen scenarios could follow such a greeting, the only one that truly made sense was so unbearably sad that it actually hurt him to consider it – that, at some point, his parents had lost a child. Having been only nine at the time of their death, it made sense that it was something they'd never shared with him, something that must have happened either before his birth or when he was very young. The thought that his parents had suffered such a loss was crushing, but when added to their tragic deaths it made Oliver want to scream out his hatred for the universe and whatever entity might be running it.

It tore at him to imagine their heartache, to picture their grief; but beyond that was his own sorrow. Although he'd never told a soul, he'd sometimes pretended that he had a sibling in the first few years after his parent's deaths – a brother he could play sports with; a sister he could read bedtime stories to. There were moments when it felt so real that it seemed as if they were just waiting in another room for him to join them. But over time he'd learned that the inevitable realization that he was still alone brought greater pain than the comfort the fantasies provided.

Shaking his head, he forced himself to retrieve the paper. He knew better than most that the absence of fact created a vacuum that the mind invariably filled with something far worse than the truth. Deciding to deal with the reality instead of the ghosts of his childhood fears, he began reading once more.

_To my darling daughter,__  
__  
I hope to one day say these words to you directly instead of scrawling them on a page you may never read, but circumstances have conspired to keep us apart at this time and paper and ink, while lacking, are far superior to leaving my thoughts to the realm of memory.__  
__  
It's been six weeks since Mary's tearful call informed me that we now had a daughter, and please believe that and in that time I've used all of the considerable resources at my disposal to find you. But as the days pass I become more and more doubtful of my success. Not that I'll stop. I will never end my search until I've held you in my arms; you have my word on that.__  
__  
It's strange to so deeply love someone I've never seen, but I find that I do; more so with each day that I miss of your life. I believe that it's quite likely because I've felt this way once before. You have a brother named Oliver. He's seven years old and a fine little man. He'll be an exceptional brother, God willing he's given the chance, and I can already picture him as your champion, taking on the world to protect you.__  
__  
I wish that I could be with you now to see you, hold you, let you know that your father loves you; goals that seem so far from reach when I'm faced with the fact that I don't even know your name. My little girl, though I long to be with you, my greatest hope is that the man who stands in my place, who is quieting your cries and rocking you to sleep, loves you even half as much in the false belief that he is your father as I do in truth.__  
__  
Your loving father,__  
Robert Queen  
_

The letter again fluttered to rest on the desktop as Oliver sat stunned, afraid to draw any conclusions for fear that the vertigo he was feeling would swallow him whole.

A sister.

He had a sister. One he'd never known about, whose existence would still be a secret resting with the dead had it not been for an unlikely set of circumstances that revealed a hidden past that brought into question the image of his parents he'd fostered since their deaths.

It all began with a bicycle accident.

Although Oliver had never been able to bring himself to live at the estate that had been home to the family he'd lost, he was zealous about seeing it meticulously maintained. The man charged with caring for the property was very contentious in his duties and followed a rigid and thorough maintenance schedule.

However, yesterday his young son had broken his leg while riding his bike. Naturally needing to be with the boy at the hospital, he'd canceled the visit from then cleaning company that came out monthly and rescheduled them for the next day. But as it was a Saturday, the crew had been made up of entirely different employees unfamiliar with the large manor. As such, they were unaware that the home's plumbing and wiring were scheduled for a complete overhaul and so, currently, was not designed to handle a variety of industrial cleaning machines jammed into one outlet via a power strip. In no time at all, the beleaguered wires had shorted and a fire had begun in the walls. Surprisingly, due to the fast action taken by the workers, the damage was minimal and confined only to his parent's suite and the one next to it.

Despite his reluctance to visit his childhood home, he felt it was necessary to personally survey the damage and he'd set out immediately for Star City.

A flood of rarely visited, yet cherished, memories hit him as he stepped into large room. Waterlogged and smelling heavily of smoke, an almost a physical pain gripped him as he took in the scorched wallpaper and the paintings thrown to the floor when the firemen opened the walls to extinguish the blaze. Bending down to retrieve a mostly intact watercolor of the manor's gardens, Oliver's eye was caught by a burned away section of the wood flooring. Through the hole created, he could make out the glint of steel.

It took only moments for him to discover the door that fit seamlessly into the planks surrounding it. Opening it, he was greeted by a small safe, large enough for a few valuables, some important papers, but not much more. The sight would have been in no way surprising in the bedroom of people as wealthy as his parents, except for one small detail – his parents had a perfectly serviceable wall safe on the other side of the room. It crossed his mind that the other safe may have been a decoy, but he quickly discarded the idea given that it had contained both family heirlooms and important papers when the estate executors had opened it all those years ago.

So, unknowing what was contained in the steel box, but with a strong belief in its sensitive nature, Oliver returned to his penthouse to retrieve the tools reserved for his alter ego, certain he would have little problem opening a safe that was state of the art at the time of instillation but considered an antique by current standards.

In little time, he cracked the lock. He sat silent for a moment, staring at the handle in his hand, overwhelmed with the realization that he was about to open a door last opened by his parents. It felt intimate, this connection to them, and he let it wash over him, wanting to savor the all too rare sensation. Finally, his curiosity won out and he turned the knob, pulling the door back to expose the contents within.

Inside he found no money, no valuables, no family treasures; there was only a simple metal box, no larger than those for shoes, that he saw, upon opening, held what he guessed to be about fifty envelopes. Pulling one randomly from the stack, he saw the date written on the front in his father's strong, even script.

_November 17, 1987_

Undeniably curious, he nevertheless replaced the envelope before transferring the entire box to the satchel he'd brought with him to transfer whatever he found back to his home. Although he cherished the sense of closeness he felt with his parents there, he knew that there would be too many feelings, too much of the crushing loss, for him to be able to sort through the safe's contents there.

The trip home was a blur and speculation whirled in his head as he contemplated what could be so important that his parents would feel the need to secure it beyond their standard methods. The only thing that he could imagine it to be was information concerning Clark and the Veritas Society.

Oliver felt the anger and pain rip through him as it did every time he thought of that group and the tragic end it had meant for his parents. Knowing that they died for something they truly believed in was hollow comfort and he tried not to dwell on the thought as it often made him want to rage at Clark for his less than reliable dedication to being the hero he could be; the hero his parents had given their lives to allow him the chance to become.

The elevator ride was as hazy as the drive, and as he set the briefcase on the large desk in his study, his eyes strayed over to the decanter of Scotch sitting on the unobtrusive bar in the corner. But before he could let it take hold, he forced the thought away. Although he hadn't sworn off alcohol, Chloe had gone to incredible lengths to clean him up and set him back on a path that didn't lead to destitution or death, and he owed it to her to give careful consideration to what was motivating his consumption at any given time. More than that, she'd helped him to see that he owed it to himself.

Instead, he removed the box from the leather bag and opened it, selecting the first envelope and revealing the letter that had change his entire world…

Fuck consideration, he thought, as he practically stumbled across the room to pour a glass of the Scotch he'd previously shunned. Spilling more on the bar than he did into the tumbler, he finally gave up and pulled a large, bracing mouthful from the crystal bottle, itself.

The alcohol burned a path to his stomach and the heat somewhat dulled the sharpest of the edges of what he was certain had been oncoming hysteria. Slumping back down into his chair, he glanced warily at the deceptively innocent looking paper that had just changed his life.

His father had a daughter with a woman who was not his mother.

Intellectually, he knew that the sentence made sense, but when he tried to give it any meaning it seemed foreign and indecipherable. He tried it again, slower.

His...father…had…a…daughter…with…a…woman…who...was…not…his…mother.

And he didn't know whether it was the alcohol or the dumbing it down for his psyche, but the reality was beginning to set in.

His father, Robert Queen, extraordinary dad and doting husband, had an affair. He'd cheated on his wife. Anger burned through him like a wild fire at the man that he'd spent a lifetime idolizing, and in a burst of fury he hurled his glass across the room and watched it shatter against the wall.

The sharp sound left in its wake pulled him out of the red haze encompassing him and the slow, downward slide of the amber liquid served as a vivid reminder of his recent battle for control. And suddenly he felt the rage drain from him.

Oliver understood that his perception of his parents had ceased changing the day that they died. He worshiped them with the innocent faith of a child and they'd retained that larger than life presence in his mind. They were the infallible authority on all that was good and he'd spent years judging himself against that ideal.

It was an unquestionable principle is his life, and with startling clarity, Oliver realized that was less because it was absolute fact, and more because he'd simply never found a reason to challenge those beliefs.

But his father's words in the letter before him demanded that he do so. He was no longer a boy, seeing things in the stark contrast of black and white. He had lived enough, done enough, to understand that the world turned in the grays. He wouldn't let the childish naiveté that had near deified his father condemn him in the same manner.

In everything he knew of his parents, all that he had experienced himself and learned from others over the years, Robert Queen had been a good man. He loved his family, he cared for those less fortunate than him, and he stood up for what he believed. The last was proven by his death at the hands of Lionel Luthor, a man few would be brave enough to oppose.

Oliver had spent the past few months fighting his own demons and coming to grips with the idea that he wasn't the sum total of his mistakes. He was starting to understand that even the best people stumbled and that true strength wasn't about never being weak. And in light of that and with the knowledge of his own sins, he found himself reluctant to so harshly judge his father for a situation that he'd never have the chance to fully understand.

Setting aside the mass of confusion surrounding his feelings for his father, Oliver focused on the one fact that he could act on – he had a sister.

Somewhere out there was another Queen. After so many years alone, he was being offered the one thing he'd longed for, that he'd prayed for on the nights he could forgive God for taking his parents. He was being given back the chance to be part of a family.

He was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions; his childhood dreams of such a happening crashing into the realities of the scenario that he understood as an adult. But no matter what happened, what path he ultimately chose to follow, he knew one thing with utter certainty. He had to find her.

Sifting through a mystery two decades old would be difficult. Especially given that his father had apparently found nothing with far more information and much less time passed. But Oliver knew that the resources at his disposal were enormously impressive by current standards, much less by those available in 1987. He wouldn't fail.

Needing as much information as possible, he gathered a handful of letters from the basket and prepared himself for a night of reading. But before he could even begin, something slipped from between the envelopes and drifted to the floor. Bending over to recover it, he realized that it was a photograph with the name _Mary_ written on the back, followed by _4/7/86_. Sitting back up, he flipped it over and froze at what he saw.

The face was free of the lines that he'd seen, the eyes sparkled with intelligence and humor that was absent when he'd viewed them, but the woman was instantly recognizable. Only her name wasn't Mary. It was Moira. Moira Sullivan.

**TBC**


End file.
